Silence in Heaven
by TheGlintOfTheRail
Summary: They survived the fall and they're on the run, but Will has a hell of a lot to think about. He had told Hannibal once that he merely tolerated where Hannibal delighted, but that had not been precisely true... but if Will can't make himself stop feeling it, then maybe he can use it. Maybe he can even find a way to let himself enjoy it.
1. Chapter 1

Will sat on the creaking deck of his boat and watched Hannibal drift in and out of consciousness, and he let the weight of his exhaustion slowly smother him. He didn't even have the energy to wish that he was dead. He had dragged them both onto the deck somehow, had pressed the water from Hannibal's lungs and made sure he was still breathing, had fumblingly cleaned their wounds and wrapped Hannibal in a blanket he'd found. It would do, for now. Somehow, neither one of them seemed to be dying at the moment.

He had been sure he was hallucinating again when he saw the little white sailing yacht, moored just inside a sea cave and bobbing with the waves. But it had really been her – the Nola. _His_ Nola. The boat he'd sailed across the Atlantic, with the ghost of Abigail and the memory of Hannibal haunting him all the way. She had been left behind in a third-rate marina in Italy when Mason had abducted them both. And afterward, Will, desperate to forget as much as he could as quickly as he could, had sold her through a proxy to a young Italian family for less than she was worth.

And Hannibal, it seemed, was that 'young Italian family.'

From behind bars he had bought her, had her provisioned with food and clothing and medical supplies, and arranged for her to be left here – why? Surely not because he had expected Will to throw them off the cliff? No—Will had seen in his eyes, in the moments before they hit the water, that Hannibal had truly not been expecting _that_. Then was it meant to be a gift, in case Will really did decide to run away with him some day?

Or was it just one more piece of Will for Hannibal to own?

Will felt as if he were still plummeting to his death. He wondered if he would ever stop feeling that way.

It had been a mad, reckless impulse, that bit of murder-suicide, conceived of and executed in the space between one heartbeat and the next. He had seen a way to be with Hannibal and not be with him, to finally give in to him and finally defeat him in the same breath, and he had seized the opportunity.

And then fate had spit in his face by sparing them both.

Oh, it would have been perfect. The perfect way to end this insanity. Everybody would have called him a hero, a tragic hero who gave his life to destroy not one but two evil men. Well, not everybody – not Jack, or Alana, or poor ruined Chilton. But Molly, she would have believed it.

Molly. For her, he knew, he ought to finish what he'd started. He ought to toss Hannibal over the side and let him sink, and then either follow him down or go home to his wife.

It enraged him that he couldn't. He looked across the boat at Hannibal, slumped under his blanket, and wished to god he had smashed his head against a rock on the way down.

Then he went to the galley and made them both some coffee.

As he measured out the grounds, he wondered what Bedelia would say, if she could see him now – infuriating, mocking Bedelia, whose coldness made his skin crawl. He couldn't place himself in her frame of mind at all. She had simply chosen to be with Hannibal and then chosen to leave him; Will could no longer really imagine _choosing_ to do either of those things.

But that was why he had gone to see her, after all. He had needed to know, why _him_? Why him and not her? Why him with the twin scars on his stomach and his face when Bedelia had betrayed Hannibal too, Bedelia had deserted Hannibal too, and Bedelia had apparently been made to suffer not at all for it?

And as he had studied her in their sham therapy sessions, she had actually helped him to understand why. Will came to realize that Bedelia could never truly betray Hannibal, in Hannibal's mind, because he didn't trust her not to betray him in the first place. Because he _expected_ her to betray him, just as he had expected it of every single other person he had ever met.

Except, he hadn't expected it of Will.

Because he loved him.

It still baffled Will, that Hannibal could feel that way about him – could feel any kind of way about him. He had denied it for as long as he could, because it simply didn't make _sense_. He had felt Hannibal's… what, his _yearning_ for him, and had been so sure that it meant something else, some strange emotion unique to Hannibal that Will had no other name for. Because how could the man who had manipulated him, drugged him, framed him, gutted him, killed his friends, and tried to saw his skull open possibly be _in love_ with him?

And then Will had stood over Hannibal in the glass house on the cliff and watched him bleed onto the floor, and he had finally understood.

Oh, he had taken so much satisfaction in finally hurting Hannibal, after all the times he had been hurt by him. He had seen Hannibal's blood and been proud that he drew it, he had seen him prone on the floor at his feet and felt as if he had finally conquered his greatest enemy. And yet he hadn't been able to let him die. Even though a part of him sincerely wanted to see Hannibal dead, he had been utterly unable to stand aside and watch it happen.

And that, Will had realized, was precisely how Hannibal felt about him – that dual impulse to ruin and rescue. That was why Hannibal had hurt him and then saved him and then hurt him again, over and over, why Will was still alive when anyone else in his position would have been long dead. Because Hannibal _did_ love Will. He hurt him because he needed him to suffer the way he had made Hannibal suffer; and he saved him because he couldn't imagine a world without his beloved Will Graham in it.

And what, Will asked himself, as he carried the coffee cups over to where Hannibal lay, did _he_ feel?

Ever since Bedelia had posed the question to him, he had wondered. He had turned it over and over in his mind, examined it like an object, and had been chilled to discover that the answer was not as definitive a 'no' as he had thought.

* * *

Will had done what he could to clean their wounds and bind them closed, but they both needed real medical attention, and Hannibal was in no position to provide it. Aside from the cuts and bruises, and aside from the shotgun pellets still lingering in his back and side, his femur seemed as if it might be fractured; worse, his skin was hot, and they both feared infection.

And of course, infuriatingly, Hannibal had a plan.

There was a Doctor Keller, he told Will, gasping through the pain - a skilled surgeon he had been acquainted with many years before. He had helped her kill her husband somehow – provided poison, or destroyed evidence, or something along those lines. Will didn't care to pry. The point was, he had asked only that she do him a favor in return someday, when he needed her.

She had thought he was such a good friend.

Three years before, when she had turned on her TV and seen that her long-ago deal had been struck with the Chesapeake Ripper, she had had a nervous breakdown and been briefly hospitalized. She told her friends and family that it was just because of the knowledge of what her old friend had done.

She had moved more than once since then, but he knew where she lived.

* * *

The woman peering through the crack in the chained cabin door had clearly been expecting someone, but that someone was not Will Graham.

"Sorry, please – I can't help you. I can see you need medical attention, I can give you directions to a hospital in the next town over, but I'm really not in a position to—"

"We have a mutual friend."

That was all he needed to say. The color left her face and she looked, briefly, as though she might pass out. Then she steeled herself and said, "Where is he?"

"In the car. You'll have to help me get him out. Do you have a wheelchair?"

She did. In fact, he saw as she unchained the door to let him in, her isolated cabin had a clinic's worth of medical supplies neatly arranged in the living room.

The moment Hannibal's escape had been announced, she had known he would come for her. Or at least, she had feared it. He had never struck her as a man to forget an agreement, even before she had known what he was. And she knew what he would want from her – why he had taken the trouble to cultivate her in the first place. So she had quietly gotten her hands on all the medical supplies she could, and she had waited.

"I thought… I thought, maybe if I hide out up here, he won't find me," she said. "But I also thought, if he does find me, well, I suppose I have to keep my word."

"Or he'll eat you."

Her eyes flashed with panic. "I… I was going to say, or he'll turn me in." She took a steadying breath. "Is he… is he going to kill me?"

"You'll have to save his life first," Will said, and he couldn't help admiring her a bit for replying, "...Right. OK. So let's go get him."

* * *

Hannibal wasn't much worse off than he had been when Will pulled him out of the water, but he wasn't much better either. He was conscious and aware of his surroundings, enough to deliver a suave "good evening, Doctor Keller" to the poor terrified woman and to hold onto the glass of water that she offered, but the pain was beginning to break through the walls of his composure. The jolt when they'd rolled him over the door jamb had almost made him black out, and he was clearly trying very hard not to whimper or scream. His face was pale and sweaty, and his eyes were glazed.

"Ok," said Keller, "he's in worse shape than you are, so let's start with him. First I've got to give him something for the pain. I've got some ketamine, it would knock him out for a while, let me work on him without him thrashing around—"

"No," breathed Hannibal, gripping the rail of his chair, "no, I don't want it—"

"Take it," said Will.

It was as transparent a power play as Will had ever made. He knew perfectly well that Hannibal would be able to endure without anesthesia, and he knew, too, exactly why he didn't want it: because, despite the fact that Will had brought him here, Hannibal had very good reason to want to avoid being unconscious in Will's presence. After all, Will had just tried to kill him. He'd been struggling to stay alert for over 30 hours, ever since he'd come to on the boat, clearly unwilling to sleep while Will was awake.

Will stood above Hannibal like he'd stood in the glass house by the cliff, looking into his eyes, and they both knew that Will simply wanted to see what Hannibal would do if Will asked him to bare his neck for the knife.

 _Surrender_ , he was saying. _You want me to stop fighting_ you _? Stop fighting_ me _._

Another moment, and then: "All right."

And Hannibal let the doctor move him to a cot and give him an injection, and she and Will watched him until he was unconscious.

Will exhaled deeply. He suddenly felt as if he'd been holding his breath for hours.

And the doctor, who had seemed increasingly puzzled by Will's presence, looked at him, visibly unsure if she should just keep her mouth shut, and said "But… aren't you… aren't you the one who caught him? Aren't you a cop?"

He just looked at her silently for a long time, long enough to make her uncomfortable. He'd perfected that technique when he was in the BSHCI; it had been one of the few tools he'd had for gaining the upper hand when he was being interrogated or psychoanalyzed.

"You don't need to worry about who I am," he said. He took a step toward her, a technique picked up from Hannibal, and was sickeningly gratified when she took a step back. "You don't need to worry about who I am because I'm not here right now." Another step. "I know you said you'd never betray Hannibal. But if you DO betray him?" "I won't –"

He grabbed her arm and looked straight into her eyes. "Shut up. If the police come and talk to you, go ahead and lie. But if you break? Tell them Hannibal came here alone."

"I'll never tell anyone anything! He'll tell everyone what I did, or, you said it yourself, he'll kill me if I say anything, so I won't, I swear I won't—"

"Oh, _he'll_ kill you?" He pushed her back gently, took another step, her back was almost to the wall now. This was so easy. "Did you see what happened back there?" Step. "Did you see the famous Hannibal the Cannibal agree to be knocked unconscious, just because I _asked_ him to?" Step. "I could slit his throat right now, and he knows I have every reason in the world to do it, and he rolled over for me like a dog anyway." They were at the wall now, and he leaned against it with his arm, his face too close to hers.

She was so afraid of him.

"You don't need to be afraid of Hannibal Lecter anymore," he said. "You need to be afraid of the guy who's got him on a leash."

He moved away from her then, and gestured toward the piles of medical supplies. "Now sew us up. Start with me."

* * *

She trembled and looked anywhere but at his face as she cleaned and stitched his wounds, and he wondered if maybe he had gone too far with her. He'd tried to channel a few old friends to play the part of the Bride of Hannibal – Dolarhyde's purring menace, Gideon's sheer glee at being who he was, and of course Hannibal's trademark invasion of personal space. It had worked for him, almost too well. It was important that the doctor be afraid of him as well as of Hannibal, of course, but had all that really been necessary?

But he'd enjoyed it. He knew that was why he had done it – not just to protect their cover by reinforcing her fear, not to cover his ass if she really did confess, but because he _could._

And because he had wanted to hear those words coming out of his mouth, wanted to see if they sounded true. He was shocked that they did.

He _did_ have Hannibal on a leash.

He could do anything now.

He could even kill her.

He wasn't sure if Hannibal had really intended to let her go free after he used her. He made much of the value of his promises, but Will could think of an unkept promise or two between them. But now the matter was out of Hannibal's hands.

Hannibal's voice in his head told him that it would be far safer to kill her.

So Will decided to let her live.


	2. Chapter 2

Will drove their eighth or ninth stolen car up a twisty little mountain road. There was another house for them to use, a hiding place, although Hannibal insisted that he was starting to run short of them.

Hannibal was asleep in the passenger's seat, pushed back as far as possible to accommodate his cast. He had been sleeping quite a lot, as he healed from his wounds; the doctor had assured Will that this was normal. They had stayed with her for some days, but Will hadn't completely trusted her to continue harboring them, even with the hold they had over her. So he'd had her tell him the basics of how to care for Hannibal's wounds, and they had left. The moment they were on the road, Hannibal had begun making a series of minor corrections to her instructions.

And then there had been days and days of running, stealing car after car and switching plates around to further confuse any possible pursuers, switching between back roads and highways, stopping only when absolutely necessary. And now it was almost over, they were almost… home, Will supposed. They would have to stay put for a good long while, waiting out the initial wave of rumors that they might still be alive, the endless photos on TattleCrime that could betray them to anyone on Earth who happened to see them. And then the attention would die back, and their wounds would heal, and they would leave again and…

What?

What would they do?

Will knew only that he could not allow himself to simply be absorbed into Hannibal's world as Bedelia had been, because Will was not Hannibal. He could never be Hannibal – not even when, in his very darkest moments, he had wished to be. He had not ceased to feel horror at killing.

He had simply ceased to repress and ignore and diminish the elation he felt alongside the horror. The elation that he had always felt, the elation that had led him to his chosen profession, where he could feel it in small, controlled doses practically every day. He would never have acted on these latent feelings, never have ceased to diligently repress them, without Hannibal coming along and coaxing them out of him. But he would always have felt them, deep down, and always been fearful and disgusted that he felt them.

Would he go back to that, if he could? He admitted to himself that he didn't really think so.

He knew he could still call the police. He could simply take a page from Bedelia's book and say that he had been coerced, drugged, kidnapped. He could go back to his life. It would be the easiest thing in the world to do.

But he had tried that already.

He thought again of Molly and felt sick. This was all so unfair to her, _he_ had been so unfair. He had thought he could just be done with Hannibal, that they would shut him away and he would be like a bad dream he had had. And then, the second he was given the slightest hint of a reason, he had gone to see him. Had needed to see him. And the moment he had seen him, he had known what a mistake it had been to leave him alive – because as long as Hannibal was alive, Will would never be able to be free of him.

That was simply the way things were. And if Will couldn't bring himself to kill Hannibal, and if he couldn't make himself stop feeling it, then maybe he could use it.

Hannibal wanted nothing more on Earth than for Will to come to him willingly. That was why he had turned himself in rather than simply abducting Will and forcing him to be his. He had needed Will to _want_ to be his in return.

Ok, Will thought. So I'm yours.

But there will be ground rules.

He had no idea how much Hannibal would really let himself be controlled. And he knew it was going to cost him something or other – maybe something that he wouldn't be able to survive losing.

You play, you pay, right?

Fine. Because he wasn't going to allow any more Beverlys.

* * *

He presented the terms to Hannibal after installing them both in the mountain house, which in a rare failure of foresight on Hannibal's part was not wheelchair-accessible.

"You keep trying to make me be you," he'd said, making sure that Hannibal could see how serious he was. "Aren't you curious about who _I_ am?"

They had been playing Hannibal's games for so long, living by Hannibal's rules. And now, Will told him, the game was over, and Hannibal had won – here Will was, standing at Hannibal's side of his own free choice. It was over – so it was time to play a new game now. And Will would set the rules this time, or the deal was off.

Will didn't know if 'calling off the deal' would mean simply leaving, or calling the police, or killing one or both of them. He didn't need to know right now; it didn't matter.

Hannibal had been utterly unsurprised by the terms. He knew Will well enough by now to know that he would have demands, and he had known what the first and most important would be: it would be Will, not Hannibal, who would choose who lived and who died.

Hannibal knew exactly what Will meant by this, although he hadn't said it. He meant _no_ killing, no killing at all, because Will, despite everything Hannibal had tried to do for him, was not yet a cold blooded murderer.

Yes, he meant it – no killing.

Would he mean it tomorrow?

Hannibal is a very patient man, and he finds the way Will clings to the remains of his shattered morality to be absolutely charming. He agreed to the deal immediately.

* * *

As they convalesced in the house on the mountain, they began to allow each other cautiously back in. They spoke very little at first, as Will changed Hannibal's dressings and brought him meals; mostly at the beginning they just slept and read and watched the fireplace or the snow in silence, as if the sudden accord between them might be destroyed by a word.

And then gradually they began to talk, small talk at first, or as close to small talk as the two of them could get, given their history; about the mountain weather, the house, what they were reading, what Will was cooking. Then other books they'd read, other recipes, other hobbies they'd had, other places they had been. They began to share the kinds of things that brought normal men closer together, and Will, at least, was mystified to find that it worked on the two of them, as well.

He had not forgotten, he would never forget, what Hannibal was. What he had done. What he might still do, to Will, to anyone and everyone he met. He would never be able to trust him, he knew that. But even still, he was starting to feel toward Hannibal almost the way he had felt way back before everything had fallen apart, before _he_ had fallen apart – when all he had known was that Hannibal was his friend.

Hannibal had been manipulating him even then, of course. In his own way, he was still manipulating him now. But now Will's eyes were open.

As time went on, they began to broach other subjects. They spoke about their past together, the traps they had laid for each other. They admitted what they had known, and when they had known it. What they had hoped for. They spoke about the ways that they had tried to destroy each other. It was strange to be so honest.

They never spoke about the cliff. Somehow it seemed as if they should wait, should leave it alone for now. It was still too…

…Will didn't know. But they didn't talk about it.

They talked about the other times, though. The other times when Will had killed, or almost killed, or tried to. And Will could finally tell him, without having to play a part, without having to _pretend_ to be his friend, about the horror and joy and arousal and confusion and the million other emotions that had surged in him each time. There had been Garret Jacob Hobbes and Randall Tier, of course. There had been Hannibal himself, both times when Will had pointed a gun at him; and Hannibal, the time Will had sent Matthew Brown to him. Clark Ingram, who Hannibal had saved. The man who had stabbed him when he was a cop, who he couldn't shoot. Cordell – Cordell, whose mutilation had been the first act of violence by Will that Hannibal had ever seen with his own eyes. Hannibal reminisced about that at length, in terms that made Will almost blush.

And Will began to ask Hannibal about his murders.

He was pushing at his boundaries by doing so – he knew he was. He had told Hannibal once that he merely tolerated where Hannibal delighted, but this had not been precisely true; some things he delighted in as well, while others he could not bring himself to tolerate at all.

So he would ask Hannibal to tell him about one of his kills, and he would listen, and he would simply let himself feel whatever he would feel.

Sometimes Hannibal would go too far in these stories, say something that made Will feel sick or angry or disturbed, and Will would simply stand up and leave without a word. In those moments he could not have brought himself to speak to Hannibal and ask him to stop, or even to say good night. Sometimes he would avoid Hannibal for days afterward.

Hannibal didn't mind this. He simply took note of what had been the bridge too far, and avoided such details as much as possible in future anecdotes.

He also made note of them as things never to do in front of Will, if Will should ever tire of his little game of muzzling him.

On the night Will asked Hannibal about Abel Gideon, about how he had come to die in Chilton's cellar without any limbs, Hannibal had glanced up from the fire in the middle of his tale and been chastened by Will's expression – he looked, for the first time in months, as if he were afraid of him.

"Will," he'd said quickly, taking his hand. "Will, I swear on my life I will never do anything like that to you."

Will smiled, a sudden amusement breaking through the confusion of fear that was still bubbling inside him. It really was completely ridiculous. He was hanging out and drinking whiskey with the Ripper, the Monster was promising not to mutilate him _too_ awfully. "Hannibal, you haven't made a promise like that saying you'll never _kill_ me."

Hannibal hadn't let go of his hand. "Of course not. Would _you_ feel comfortable making such a promise to _me_?"

Will actually laughed. No. No, of course not.

And he didn't leave.

"Listen…" he said, after another moment. "Just now, do you have any stories that _aren't_ about killing?"

Hannibal smiled. "I have thousands," he said, and started in on a cocktail party anecdote, something he'd used to use when he especially wanted to charm his host.

And then there were other nights. Nights when Will would listen to Hannibal almost raptly, his revulsion no more than a muttering in the back of his mind. He would close his eyes on those nights and see Hannibal before him like he had seen him on the cliff, clear and sharp against a wavering backdrop of blood. And he would watch him kill, building the image in his mind as Hannibal described it to him; would allow himself to feel what Hannibal must have felt as he did his work.

Will felt closest to Hannibal then.

Hannibal became almost theatrical in those times, telling the stories like fairy tales. He had always loved to perform – for dinner guests, for colleagues and protégés, for the police, for his victims. And he had never in his life had the opportunity to tell these stories to an audience who was willing to hear them.

Eager to hear them.

So they passed a few months alone together, and then, after Hannibal felt strong again, they began to plan their departure.


	3. Chapter 3

It had been close to a year since they had moved out of the mountain house, to a city large enough to absorb them without taking any notice of them, and they had not had to move again – which was to say, they hadn't yet been tracked or identified, and they hadn't drawn attention to themselves by killing.

For the time being, Hannibal did not consider this to be a significant hardship. He had stopped killing many times before, for months and even years at a time, in order to avoid scrutiny or simply to turn his focus to other pursuits. He had stopped for three years in the BSHCI. Killing was his greatest pleasure and his life's vocation, but it was not a compulsion for him. He was patient. He had his memories. And Will was his.

Will. It was such a pleasure to watch him negotiate the boundaries of his new existence, to sift through the detritus of his old life and determine what still had value to him; it could not be rushed.

He would kill again. Hannibal had every confidence in him.

Of course, if the years went on and he seemed truly intractable, Hannibal might choose to employ some other tactic. He could put Will in the path of dangerous men again, as he had done so many times before; he could do many other things as well. But his preference was to wait, and see what Will showed him of himself.

He thought of the night on the cliff very often, when the two of them had seen each other as no two people had ever been seen, had let the boundaries between them blur into nonexistence. But Will had yet to broach the subject, so they still did not discuss it; and there had been no more moments like that one.

But that didn't mean there was no intimacy between them at all. It was wonderful to tell Will about the kills, to watch him see the beauty and the power in what Hannibal had done. To watch him understand. Hannibal had yet to tire of it even slightly. For most of his life, he had simply _known_ that no one on earth was capable of understanding his art—until he had stood in Will Graham's lecture hall and been transfixed, as he saw Will tell his students exactly what the Ripper was.

He told Will about other murders, too, murders that were only in his mind. Whenever it occurred to him that someone ought to die, he would let Will know of it. Will did not respond to these little suggestions of Hannibal's, except to tell him 'no,' but Hannibal made a point of continuing to suggest them. It was important that Will remember, as Hannibal demurred to his whims, that he had whims of his own which he was choosing not to follow; and besides, it amused him to have his Will tell him 'no.' It amused him to obey him.

He would have liked for Will to tell him these things too – to tell Hannibal who he'd like to kill. But Will would volunteer nothing about this.

Will, for his part, knew that he could not be certain he was done with killing. He was many things, but he was a killer as well; and to deny it now, given what his life had become, given who his companion was, struck him as utterly ridiculous.

But he was also in control of himself, perhaps more in control of himself than he had ever been, and he would not kill Hannibal's way. Because Hannibal's reasons for killing, despite what Hannibal himself might think, were simply not good enough. Will thought it entirely possible that he might never again meet a person who he felt he deserved to kill. Hannibal saw such people every day; he was petty that way.

Yet, for the moment, those people still lived – because Will said so.

* * *

And yet, Will reminded himself for the thousandth time one evening as he watched Hannibal flit around the kitchen, Hannibal was not tamed, and he was not defanged. He was simply allowing himself to be caged.

And somehow, on this particular night, the fact of his compliance was obscurely frustrating to Will. Hannibal was just _so_ obliging, so ready to consent to what he must surely consider a farce.

So superficially… _agreeable_.

And Will realized, with a thrill of horror, that a part of him missed the Ripper.

Because there was something he had not quite been able to admit, not even to himself. In those few moments on the cliff, after the Dragon was dead, Will would have said that he loved Hannibal – and not Hannibal the man, but Hannibal the monster. Even now, even after having lived side by side with him for so long, even having been transported by his stories, Will still didn't understand how it was possible that he could have felt that way. He had not been able to look that feeling in the face since that night; and so he had pulled back from the monster, he was holding it at arm's length. He had given it only a very few outlets, in this new life of theirs.

But the monster – the part of Hannibal that had taunted him, manipulated him, nearly completely destroyed him multiple times over – Will _missed_ it. He missed being close to it.

He missed who he was, when he was standing beside it.

He knew this was insane. He even knew that Hannibal had probably anticipated this very reaction, had been so infuriatingly compliant in order to drive Will to this point. But he couldn't help it.

Hannibal and Will might have many things in common, but there was only one thing that bound them to each other.

It was entirely possible that Will might be with Hannibal for the rest of his life. And if he could never escape him, the pull of him, then did he really intend to live with him and die with him and still keep himself at such a remove?

Will would not set him free, no. But there must be some way to visit him again.

He didn't want to forget the cliff.

And… he wanted to be seen, too.

* * *

Two weeks later, they sat in the corner of a large and popular bar, watching the crowd and getting amiably tipsy. They did this fairly often; it was good to simply be out in the world, after all those months spent in complete isolation together. It made Will feel that he had not completely ceased to be a normal man.

And every night out afforded Hannibal yet another opportunity to declare someone dead in his mind.

On this particular night, the dead man became so when he strode past them on his way back from the bathroom and drunkenly rammed into their table, spilling half of Will's beer onto his shirt.

The man laughed and said, "Oh, shit!"

"You should apologize," said Hannibal.

The man just laughed again and walked away, stumbling over to the bar where his friends were waiting for him. Hannibal waited until Will had finished cleaning himself up with a stack of bar napkins and settled back into the chair beside him before he murmured, "I really think I should be allowed to kill him, Will."

"No," Will said.

Then, without allowing himself to hesitate, he laid his hand delicately on Hannibal's forearm where it rested on the table.

Apart from caring for his wounds, it was the most Will had touched him since the cliff.

"But…" he asked, "how would you do it?"

He couldn't help himself from adding: "If I let you?"

Hannibal glanced at him and smiled.

"He would be easy to take," he said. "His cousin will drive him home, I heard him say so at the bar; but the cousin with the car is drunk as well, look at him. He will not see that I am following him, and he will not wait and make sure that our friend gets safely inside. He will drive away, and our friend will have trouble with his keys at the door. That's when I would take him."

So, then, he had already thought about it. He had eavesdropped on the conversations of the men at the bar even before the beer had been spilled, casually stalking them all like a cat. Collecting vulnerabilities. Idly deciding how they each might die.

If Will let them.

This was not theoretical. A word from Will and the man would die, tonight.

A part of him wanted to let it happen. He allowed himself to want it. He allowed himself to look at the man and see what Hannibal saw: a creature that, having offended him, no longer deserved to live.

"And after you took him," Will said. "After you had him. What would you do to him then?"

"I would take him home," said Hannibal, "and give him to you."

Will's hand tightened on Hannibal's arm. He met his eyes.

Will had not been prepared for the way Hannibal was looking at him.

Hannibal leaned in so that he could speak softly, so that no one else could possibly hear. Will's nerves were vibrating like tuning forks.

"I want to watch you kill him, Will," he said. "I want to see your face wet with blood again."

Since their fugitive existence had begun, Will had not allowed himself to imagine any killings besides the few of his own, and the ones that Hannibal recounted to him. But now, with Hannibal's voice in his ear, he could feel hot blood spattering his skin.

The man was innocent, really. But this was only his imagination.

And the man hadn't even apologized.

"Yes," he whispered. "I'd kill him for you."

"How would you do it?"

Yes. How would he do it?

Every man he had killed, he had killed in a state of panic. Of fear for his own life. And he had always wondered, what must it be like…

"I would tie him," Will said. "Tie him down. So that he couldn't fight back. And then…"

He remembered Tier. It had been so hard to admit these things to himself back then.

"Then I would beat him to death with my hands. I would make it last."

He meant it. If he had chosen to allow it to himself, if he had chosen to ignore what he believed to be right, he would have done it that way, and he would have enjoyed it. He would have soaked up the man's fear and pain and panic like a sponge as he killed him, let it mingle with his own magnificent animal rage, until finally the man became nothing, nothing at all, and Will was left with only a quiet sense of elemental power.

Yes. He would have enjoyed killing the man.

And he would have enjoyed performing for Hannibal, being the killer Hannibal loved.

He moved his hand up Hannibal's arm, his hand that in his mind was already bloody, dripping gore like the dark water in his dreams. He let his fingers intertwine with Hannibal's fingers, remembering how Hannibal had held Will's hands in his own as he had cleaned them and dressed them, how he had removed the shards of Randall Tier's bones imbedded in his flesh.

He remembered the way Hannibal had looked at him on the cliff.

He felt an impulse he couldn't name.

He leaned in closer to Hannibal, brought his mouth close to Hannibal's ear.

"Or maybe..." Will said quietly, "maybe I wouldn't kill him that way. Maybe I would tie his arms to a board, and put a noose around his neck, and make him balance on a bucket, and cut him open from his wrists to his elbows. Maybe I would kill him the way Matthew Brown tried to kill you for me. So that I could finally know what it would have been like, if I could have done it myself."

He paused.

"And… so that you would have to watch someone die that way, Hannibal. You had nightmares afterward, didn't you? I was so proud that he gave you nightmares. But I wished it had been me."

He looked up at Hannibal again. He wasn't sure what he would see.

Hannibal and the Ripper were looking back at him, and they were electrified.

Will's fingers found the inside of Hannibal's wrist, where the scar began. It felt like the one Hannibal had given him with the hooked knife, raised and ragged-edged. Torn open. He ran his fingers gently down it, in the direction the cut had been made, letting himself imagine making it.

Neither had let go of the other's gaze.

The man and the beer didn't matter anymore.

"All the times I tried to kill you," Will whispered, "and I never got to make you bleed with my own hands."

"You may yet," said Hannibal.

He might almost have wanted it.

It was as if it were that night again – as if they were falling again, slaying the Dragon again, embracing each other again. As if the fall and the kill and the embrace all occupied the same moment in time.

They might kill again, thought Will, and they might not.

Perhaps Hannibal might even grow tired of him someday.

But not today. Not tonight.

They sat at the table in the corner of the bar, and drank each other's radiance.


End file.
